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The end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 brought some bittersweet calf news as well as an exciting update for the community that follows Southern Resident killer whales, also known as orcas.

The Center for Whale Research (CWR) confirmed in that an orca calf a female initially dubbed J61, birthed to J35, Tahlequah, died in recent days.

Going further, the research center J35 has been seen carrying the body of J61 with her. The CWR noted this behavior was seen previously by J35 in 2018 when she carried the body of her a previous calf that had died for more than two weeks — 17 days.

“I think it’s fair to say that she is grieving or mourning,” Science Director for the SeaDoc Society Joe Gaydos said in a news conference Thursday.

In a statement online, the CWR explained that while the death of any whale calf is significant, this one was called out as a detrimental loss.

“The death of J61 is particularly devastating, not just because she was a female, who could have one day potentially led her own matriline but also given the history of her mother J35 who has now lost two out of four documented calves – both of which were female,” the CWR statement reads.

In Thursday’s news conference, Public Affairs Office for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Michael Milstein noted this loss hits harder than most.

“She’s, of course, known around the world for carrying her earlier calf for 17 days in 2018 which was heartbreaking at the time,” he said. “It’s that much harder to see now that she has lost another one.”

As part of its coverage of this recent orca death, Tahlequah carried her calf who lived only for about 30 minutes for more than 1,000 miles in 2018.

“ and changed the conversation about the southern resident orcas, igniting a new understanding of their close-knit family bonds, intelligence — and that they are struggling to survive,” the Times in its story.

“We have the same neurotransmitters that they have, we have the same hormones that they have,” Gaydos said. “Why shouldn’t we also have the same emotions that they have?”

J61 was Tahlequah’s fourth viable calf. Her two previous offspring that lived are J47 Notch and J57 Phoenix, who are both male.

New calf dubbed J62 also spotted

However, in more exciting news, the CWR wrote in its January 1 statement on it received reports on the evening of December 30 that a new calf may be traveling with the J19 and J16 pods.

“The same time the team realized J35 calf had died, they also saw a new calf in J’s pod that is very much alive and looks healthy,” Gaydos said.

On December 29, a crew got on the water with J pod and confirmed this new calf, designated J62, the CWR explained. The calf was amongst multiple females throughout their encounter, so more observations are needed to verify who the mother is.

The calf’s sex isn’t yet known but the team reported the calf appeared physically and behaviorally normal.

There were concerns about orca whale calf J61

The CWR confirmed Tahlequah birthed her now deceased calf in a Facebook  on Christmas Eve. However, the Orca Conservancy noted in its own  that researchers voiced their concerns for its survival.

is the agency that records body measurements of the whales. SR3 researchers, according to the Orca Conservancy, believe the calf was born prematurely and Tahlequah looked to be in subnormal body condition in October.

“Ideally, mothers need to be robust with ample fat storage to help with the demands of lactation,” the Orca Conservancy stated in its post.

According to CWR, only about 1 in 5 orcas pregnancies lead to a calf that lives to its first birthday.

“The center’s research director, Michael Weiss, estimated that only 50% of orca calves survive their first year,” the AP stated.

Researchers with , part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), spent time with the new calf and brought back distressing news.

“They observed the calf remaining underwater for extended amounts of time indicating nursing or attempts to nurse,” the Orca Conservancy wrote. “The calf had also been observed being pushed around on J35’s head and was not looking lively, which is a concern, but also added calf behavior is not fully understood. All of this serves as a reminder that in order for new calves, salmon stocks need to be recovered to levels that will help support population growth.”

Other whale news: Family of orca Tokitae revisits site of her capture more than 50 years later

The spokesperson ended the video by highlighting the importance of salmon and the fight to keep orcas from going extinct.

“I hope that this new baby inspires everyone and gives them hope to work for them and to fight for them because the southern residents show us time and time again that given the chance they will thrive and survive, so it’s up to us to give them that chance,” they said.

Orca Network president speaks on salmon restoration

Co-founder and Board President of  Howard Garrett joined ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio in October to discuss what now appears to be a similar decline of orca calf L128.

“Basically, Chinook salmon, which have been their primary diet for eons, are now very scarce out there,” he explained. “So they’re relying on other fish, coho, chum salmon, sometimes sablefish, other fish, steelhead when they can find them, but those don’t have the caloric value that a nursing mother, a lactating mother, needs to have in order to feed the baby and maintain her own body health. So according to the best prevailing theories, they were not getting enough to eat, so that does not allow the baby to grow normally.”

More details: Lack of Chinook salmon keeps Southern Resident orcas on endangered list

The main reason the population hasn’t grown is a lack of wild salmon supplies, according to Garrett. He said there has been a lot of salmon restoration lately but the four lower Snake River dams are blocking valuable resources.

“That’s a 5,000 square mile wilderness area that is perfect Chinook spawning grounds and has been for thousands of years, but the access has been blocked by four dams on the Snake River and those are preventing the smolts, the little seven or eight-inch fish that have been growing for a year up in the wilderness, to be able to get down to the ocean,” he said. “So that cuts off the supply of probably half of the normal, historical, supply of fish for the whales.”

°Õ³ó±ðÌý offers recommendations that people can do in their everyday lives to help protect salmon, such as choosing safer cleaning products, throwing away dog poop, washing cars at a carwash instead of driveways, taking public transportation and more.

And while Garrett said removing salmon from your diet is a “wonderful symbolic gesture,” it’s not a big factor.

“There’s boat noise, there’s contaminants, there’s inbreeding and all of those things that we can address we should be addressing,” Research Director for the Center for Whale Research Michael Weiss said in Thursday’s news conference. “But the thing that really is universal across the analyses that have been run is you can’t get recovery of the population without boosting the food available to them.”

Other negative impacts on the reproduction process and health of newborns, according to Garrett, are bioaccumulation of organic chlorine pollutants, flame retardants and PCBs (“a group of man-made organic chemicals consisting of carbon, hydrogen and chlorine atoms,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).

Contributing: Heather Bosch, ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio; The ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio news desk; The Associated Press

Julia Dallas is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read her stories here. Follow Julia on X  and email her here.

Steve Coogan is the lead editor of MyNorthwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on , or email him here.